The debate over immigration often sparked allegations of xenophobia (fear of the stranger/foreigner). There were, however, numerous reasons for concern about the border. Aside from the issue of illegality, part of the fear of those who worried about open borders may well have been due to a declining national emphasis on assimilation.
In the past, immigrants were expected to become part of a “melting pot,” but in the Seventies that concept began shifting to a “salad bowl” in which groups kept their distinct identities and, aside from residence, shared little of what it meant to be an American.
The melting pot was never a purging process. Many of its advocates marched in St. Patrick’s Day parades and it was hardly one-sided. America changed the immigrants, and the immigrants changed America. Ultimately there was a blend which enriched the overall culture, but it was within boundaries and basic loyalty, and affection were expected.
Over time, de-emphasizing assimilation - the very concept often drew allegations of racism - came with a distinct price. The ties that bound the nation together became frail and loose while separate group loyalties grew stronger and standards were mocked.
A mere home address is a poor way of describing a citizen and those who are “citizens of the world” are, in reality, citizens of nowhere.
There is a certain irony in the fact that Americans in the Forties, when many states had odious segregation laws, took greater pride in their nation than Americans do in 2025 when the United States has led the world in one civil rights advance after another.
One reason for the increase in self-criticism is a close relative of xenophobia: oikophobia.
What is oikophobia? Simply put, it is contempt for ourselves.
In his book Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations, Benedict Beckeld traces the attitude back to ancient Greece and notes what he calls “a repetitive pattern, namely that with wealth comes an unwillingness to die for one’s civilization, and with that unwillingness oikophobia goes hand in hand.”
He notes that oikophobia is not an either-or proposition. It’s possible to love or appreciate other nations while still being loyal to one’s own. [Thomas Jefferson had a strong affection for France.]
But like xenophobia, oikophobia has a decidedly ugly feature. Philosopher Roger Scruton defined it as “the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture, and institutions that are identifiably ‘ours.’” He added that “Oikophobia is a stage through which the adolescent mind normally passes. But it is a stage in which some people – intellectuals especially – tend to become arrested….”
The late Paul Hollander, a Hungarian-born sociologist who wrote numerous books on anti-Americanism while a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts (no minor trick, that) placed much of his focus on the intellectual class. He found that a root cause of oikophobia was the adoption of a never-ending utopian standard instead of a pragmatic one.
Hollander notes:
“No social system can live up to such high and open-ended expectations. The adversarial critic will not be impressed by how much freedom (or material well being, or educational opportunity, or support for the arts, etc.) there is, since there could always be more, especially if we are the chosen people. Hence we must forever face reproach and self-reproach. By contrast those who are not among the chosen and more fallible, escape criticism altogether since little is expected of them.”
Hollander’s description of an impossible standard has echoes of the psychological condition known as “The Impostor Syndrome” in which people, no matter how highly accomplished, continually find themselves lacking.
What is the skill the so-called impostors lack? One they don’t have. The specifics vary from person to person and yet the remedial skill or characteristic is somehow always elusive.
A never-ending quest for success resembles a death march where the guards whisper, “Don’t celebrate. You’re not that great.”
Some scholars, such as James Piereson of The Manhattan Institute, trace an increase in anti-Americanism to the late 1960s when the United States, having experienced the assassination of a young and charismatic president; entered a long period of turmoil deepened by its controversial involvement in the Vietnam War.
What should have been a congratulatory period following passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act quickly became a search for new offenses.
That doesn’t mean that new offenses did not exist and that legal reforms were not needed, but the traditional pragmatic camp which sought to make corrections through the system soon had a rival within their ranks, a more adversarial one aimed at the system itself.
Look back at the demands to eliminate Stanford University’s mandatory Western Civilization class in 1987. The protesters, led by Jesse Jackson, chanted “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go.” As bad as that idea was, all they wanted was to replace a class. The replacement of “Western Civilization” with “Cultures, Ideas, and Values” was one of the key points in the spread of “multiculturalism.”
Few people at that time thought the protesters wanted the real Western Civilization - the larger, lawgiving, rights-protecting, and innovative Western Civilization culture - to go.
But fast-forward to today and you’ll encounter people who are deadly serious about destroying Western Civilization.
And replacing it with what? That’s when they get a tad vague. Rest assured that the details will arrive after they assume power.
In a previous Substack post, I proposed that Totalitarian Studies should be taught in high school and college. Learning the extreme flaws of other systems would help us to see our own in a clearer light.
Learning more about oikophobia and how it operates in the American political and educational environment would also be beneficial.
Paul Hollander is not the only scholar who noted the self-loathing of our intellectual class and certainly the United States is not the only nation to experience such one-sided criticism. Jean-François Revel and Douglas Murray have found similar double-standards in France and Britain. Douglas Murray broadly described this as “The War on the West”:
“The culture that gave the world lifesaving advances in science, medicine, and a free market that has raised billions of people around the world out of poverty and offered the greatest flowering of thought anywhere in the world is interrogated through a lens of the deepest hostility and simplicity. The culture that produced Michelangelo, Leonardo, Bernini, and Bach is portrayed as if it has nothing relevant to say. New generations are taught this ignorant view of history. They are offered a story of the West’s failings without spending anything like a corresponding time on its glories.”
Anyone who doubts this double-standard should examine the level of criticism that is currently leveled on university campuses against the United States and Israel.
Compare that to the criticism directed at the Chinese and Cuban dictatorships and the kleptocracies that run many African nations.
Such comparisons can produce a far more accurate measurement than the “We Are Perpetually Unworthy” scale applied by the “oiks” in many circles today.
In fact, when you consider the alternatives, the new chant should be:
“Ho ho, hey hey, Western Civ had better stay.”
Recommended Reading
Benedict Beckeld, Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations.
Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism: Irrational and Rational; From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez: Intellectuals and a Century of Political Hero Worship; and The Survival of the Adversary Culture.
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensitivity Training, and New Age Therapy Hijacked the Civil Rights Revolution.
Douglas Murray, The War on the West; and On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization.
James Piereson, Camelot and the American Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism; and Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America’s Postwar Political Order.
Jean-François Revel, Anti-Americanism; and How Democracies Perish.
Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks & Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.
Tom Wolfe, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.